


Of Giving Up and Giving In

by KrisseyCrystal (IceCreAMS)



Series: Of Bridges and Shores (Zestiria - AtlA AU) [5]
Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Avatar Sorey, Bending (Avatar), Fire Sage Lailah, Fluff, M/M, Pining, Waterbender Mikleo, Waterbending & Waterbenders, hand-holding, healthy soymilk, just a little bit, that kinda thing, the ol AtlA AU is back friendos!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 05:54:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19419814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceCreAMS/pseuds/KrisseyCrystal
Summary: Mikleo should really learn to be better at telling his childhood friend, "No." At the very least, he should be able to look into those pouting green eyes and say, "Not yet," or "Another time."But when Sorey asks for him to please teach him waterbending on a fishing vessel in the middle of the ocean, Mikleo supposes that the only thing he can do is try.





	Of Giving Up and Giving In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShepherdSoreyDidNothingWrong (Sagnessagiel)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sagnessagiel/gifts).



> HAPPY (BELATED) BIRTHDAY, MARIA! This is for you, who requested Mikleo teaching Sorey how to waterbend from the AtlA AU. Set after the current arc in "Of Bridges and Shores," once Sorey, Mikleo, and Lailah have escaped the Fire Nation ship--and after they've met some other folks, too. ;) In this one rare moment of peace, Sorey's lessons can finally begin...or try to begin, anyway.
> 
> Sorey's never been the best of students.
> 
> Enjoy!

Lailah, Sorey, and Mikleo didn’t intend to dive into the sea and scare innocent fishermen. Not really. It was just: Atakk was hungry and when a dragon is hungry, no matter what sort of connection it may happen to share with a young and spirited boy, it will deign to eat when it pleases. So from the middle of the sky, Atakk dove.

“Atakk, no!” Sorey had cried.

“Oh my!” Lailah had giggled.

Mikleo did _not_ scream.

They hit the water with a terrific splash that rocked the fishermen’s boat from side to heavy side. Giant swells continued to lob them until the three loosened riders finally bobbed to the ocean’s surface. Sorey sputtered salty water out of his mouth. Lailah giggled again. Mikleo scowled, leaning low into the water. 

“Ahoy there!” a fisherman called from the railing of the teetering ship. He had one tanned hand planted flat on the top of his head to keep his wide-brimmed hat stationary. “That _your_ dragon?”

“Uh…” Sorey looked to his two companions briefly, then waded back around to squint up through the bright noonday sun at the stranger. He placed the flat of his hand against his forehead for a spot of shade. “Y-yeah! Sorry about that!”

“He’s eatin’ all o’ the fish!”

Sorey winced. “Uh, yeah...sorry!”

“If we get you out, think you can send him to another area to, uh, have his fill?”

Sorey wobbled around in the water to Lailah and Mikleo again--this time, with a curious glance. But it’s looking at Mikleo that gave him the idea.

“I can do you one better!” Sorey grinned and with wide strokes of his arms, swung himself around once more. “Where’ve you laid your nets?”

* * *

In the end, it was aboard the fishing ship, watching as Mikleo and Atakk worked together to herd and bubble fish conveniently into the workers’ nets that gave Sorey his second idea of the day. Mikleo was no less sure it was any better than his first.

“I’m not teaching you how to waterbend on a fishing vessel in the middle of the ocean.”

“ _Please_ teach me how to waterbend on a fishing vessel in the middle of the ocean?”

One of the fisherman, overhearing as he finished boxing up the last of the caught fish, snickered. “Kind of need to be a bender to be able to do _that_ , lad.”

Sorey hesitated, and at that hesitation--within the span of that half-second of debate as to whether or not he should reveal who he was--Mikleo shook his head and then kept shaking it. “This is so stupid…” he sighed and turned away.

Sorey’s shoulders fell. 

First Zaveid; now...

“...are you coming or not?”

Sorey perked back up, hope igniting in his chest. “You mean you’ll really show me?”

“I’ll try. Doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll get anywhere, but we’ll try.”

Mikleo purposefully ignored the weight of Lailah’s too-clever eyes on them from where she sat on the quarter-deck near their heavy coats and boots and socks as they’ve been laid out to dry. He thought Lailah might have been smiling, but he didn’t want to chance turning around and making her aware how self-conscious he was about this role that Sorey had unintentionally forced him into.

They stopped at the starboard rail. A fair distance away, a sated Atakk had taken to lazily playing in the water. With a happy, purring roar, the dragon rolled onto his back and kicked his legs up into the air, then dove back down under the surface, only to rise again a moment later.

Mikleo did not yet fully trust the beast, but the sight of the giant creature so contented and at peace pulled at the corners of his mouth. 

“All right,” Mikleo began. “Waterbending.”

“Waterbending.” Sorey nodded. His hands were tightly fisted at his sides. There was a certain and eager bounce to the rock of his weight up from his heels to his toes and back again. The ship’s wood was sunwarm under their bare feet. 

“Some call it the element of change.”

“Right.”

“It’s incredibly versatile. Follows the flow of energy. It’s important to remember that; when you’re waterbending, you have to be flexible. You move _with_ it; not against it.”

“Right.”

Mikleo sighed. “You’re not actually listening to a word I’m saying, are you?”

“No, I am!” Sorey sounded put-out. His hands unclenched from his sides. 

“We’re not going to jump right in to cool attack moves, Sorey.”

“I...I know that!”

Did he? Mikleo fought a smile and shook his head. “I mean, you have to understand what you’re working with before you actually bend. Didn’t--” His eyes darted away and over his childhood friend’s shoulder to the fishermen watching them. 

A sudden thought with terrible, sharp teeth dug into his head: did Sorey even realize the amount of _danger_ they were in here, surrounded by strangers in the middle of the ocean? How would these people react to learning Sorey was the Avatar? To learning Sorey and Lailah were firebenders? These were the first non-benders they’ve come across since their travels first haphazardly began a few days ago. They said they were from the Earth Kingdom, but who knew what priorities they held in their hearts? The entire reason they were letting their clothes dry naturally was because they didn’t want Lailah and Sorey’s abilities to be _known_. What if they started questioning why Sorey was learning to waterbend now? 

Mikleo’s breath got short sometimes when he remembered that they were on their own _._ Being on their own meant it was never clear who they were supposed to _trust_ now and you know, sometimes he thought about how easy it had been for Sorey to have been swept aboard that Fire Nation ship and what if it happened _again_ and--

“--didn’t what? Mikleo?”

Mikleo blinked hard and jerked back up to Sorey’s worried greens.

Sorey frowned. “Hey. You all right?”

“Fine.” Mikleo shook his head and turned to give their not-so-subtle audience his back. Suddenly, he wished for his heavy coat. Though he wore his blue-wrap shirt, sash, and dark pants of the Southern Water Tribe, he felt naked, somehow. Exposed. “Never mind. We’ll start with something simple, I guess. A ripple.”

“A ripple,” Sorey echoed and like a match had been struck, there it was again: his eager, earnest desire to learn.

Mikleo found it hard to frown when his childhood friend had _that_ look on his face.

Mikleo raised a hand and slowly, gently, dipped a finger, then two. He let the motion travel up his arm and to his shoulder, slowly dipping the water and bending it, letting the one spot he had been focusing on ripple outward with gradual increase in its rise and fall.

“Whoa…” Sorey breathed. 

Mikleo cast him a glance out of the corner of his eye. “Now, you try. Mimic my movements.”

“Okay!”

Sorey stuck out his arm with all the delighted eagerness to please as a puppy dog. It made Mikleo’s grin widen despite how he bit his cheek to keep his face in check. He started over, with just a finger, then two, and the motions followed to strengthen the wave. With his face set in an adorable display of concentration, Sorey copied him devotedly. Single-mindedly, as if nothing else in the world were important. But when his green eyes darted to the water, his face fell.

“Nothing’s happening...”

“Are you focused more on watching me or on waterbending?”

“I--” Sorey’s cheeks flooded with color. His gaze snapped away. “--both.” And when Mikleo started laughing, he insisted, “I’m trying, okay?”

“I know. Here, let’s do it again; this time, really focus on one spot. You’re not controlling the whole ocean; just a part of it. It will give if you do.” With a wide sweep of his arm, Mikleo smoothed out the tides and gave them perfect stillness to work with.

And though he had seen his friend do this a thousand and one times, still Sorey breathed with awe.

“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

Again, Mikleo began small. A finger, then two. Tiny, delicate flicks to which the water responded and moved and then, Mikleo echoed it. The motions in his arm grew in perfect accord with the growth of the ripples, as if the two--ocean water and iceborn boy--were sharing a dance. As if they were whispering a secret to one another, passing the tides and tidings back and forth and back and forth. And when Mikleo chanced a glance to his right to see how Sorey was fairing--

\--he saw nothing.

The water was still perfectly unmoving, though Sorey’s face was locked tight in focus. Sweat beaded along his brow. Just how hard was he trying?

Mikleo dropped his arm. “Sorey, you can’t force it.”

Sorey dropped his arm and exhaled with his entire body. “I’m not.”

“It’s not like--” --again, Mikleo glanced behind them, but thanks to Sorey’s efforts, or the lack of a product of his efforts, perhaps, they had grown uninterested and were tending to other duties on the deck. He bent closer. “It’s not like firebending. You can’t just make it bend to your will. There’s a reason water is formless and slips through your fingers; it won’t be coerced into doing what you want--”

“--is that what you think firebending is?”

For a reason Mikleo wasn’t sure of how to _acknowledge_ , there was a flicker of something else in Sorey’s eyes as he looked at him. Maybe something close to hurt.

Mikleo shook his head quickly and stepped closer. “No. Never mind. A different approach, then.” 

Thankfully, Sorey seemed just as eager to let the matter go. His left hand remained loose, puppet-like; easy for Mikleo to take hold of as he came up to his side and extended it before them. Sorey’s breath hitched just the slightest at the touch, though Mikleo couldn’t discern why. Sorey had always been warm, something akin to a walking furnace that Mikleo had enjoyed curling close to when they were children and his mother let him sleep outside the tribe walls in Zenrus and Sorey’s tent. Now, however, he was burning up.

Strange.

He spread Sorey’s fingers out with his own and put his other hand on the small of Sorey’s back. Sorey’s spine jolted straight as if startled.

“Hold still.”

“I--y-yeah.”

Mikleo shook his head at how jumpy Sorey had become and cleared his throat. “Focus. Listen to the water, okay? Really tune in to it, and be patient. If you let all of your frustrations from your previous attempts roll off of you, this will be much easier.”

Sorey nodded. His next exhale slid out shaky. “Okay.”

“Let me do the aiming. I’ll point you in the right direction. You just focus on bending.”

“G-got it.”

Mikleo took a breath and like promised, began to move Sorey’s arm for him. He started with just a dip of Sorey’s pointer finger, testing the waters; waiting for Sorey’s focus to yield at least a minor bend to the waters before them. But nothing happened. Not for a long stretch of time, even when he began to move the rest of Sorey’s arm, hoping that with the greater movements, there might be a result.

The water remained perfectly still.

Mikleo didn’t realize Sorey had been holding his own breath until he felt the boy’s lungs give with it. Sorey sighed. And it was such a distressed, such a _sad_ sound--that Mikleo knew immediately what his old friend was going to give up.

So he cheated.

Just as Sorey’s mouth opened, Mikleo gave a flick of his own hand behind Sorey’s back and the water dipped with a small, low rise that followed.

Sorey gasped. He spun out of Mikleo’s hold to face him, wide green eyes bright.

“Mikleo! Did you see that?”

“Yeah,” Mikleo chuckled and echoed the smile on Sorey’s face. “I saw.” 

“I did it! I actually did it!”

Guilt crawled up Mikleo’s sternum but he smiled it away, clasped his hands behind his back, and told it, _Another time_. “You sure did.”

Sorey’s hands tightly clasped around his face, one on either side of his cheeks, his fingers digging into Mikleo’s chestnut hair. And before Mikleo could sputter out a question, a word, or even a sound, Sorey eclipsed the late afternoon sun. He placed a kiss right above his mother’s gleaming circlet.

Sorey pulled back. The warmth of his hands fell away with him. “I gotta tell Lailah!” 

“I--” Mikleo blinked, stunned. Dazed. Rocked by a force of nature called Sorey. “--yeah.”

He watched, still spellbound by something indescribable, as Sorey scrambled towards the quarterdeck, cheering. The tail of his Water Tribe shirt-wrap billowed behind him. And then, as shock ebbed, quiet laughter bubbled up from deep inside. Mikleo raised a hand to his fair-brown fringe, where Sorey’s lips had ghosted a moment prior. 

Did Sorey even realize what he had done? Knowing the daft fool, probably not.

...did _Mikleo_ realize what he had done?

Biting his lip, Mikleo let his hand fall away. He cast his amethyst gaze to the sea and felt its salty breeze ruffle his hair. He wondered if he did the right thing, feigning Sorey’s success for him. If Sorey were to try again later, would he just be more disappointed after having had a single, if small, hope? Would it have been kinder for Sorey to experience failure now? 

Why had it been so difficult for Sorey to bend water in the first place? Would he struggle just as much when they finally found the airbender Dezel? Or would airbending come easier to him?

“Too many questions,” Mikleo huffed. 

He could hear Zenrus’ weathered voice in his head, chiding in his paternal, wise way: _Don’t cross bridges you haven’t seen yet, Mikleo._

Mikleo smiled to the water and listened to Sorey’s bright laughter, paired with Lailah’s enthusiastic cheer of, “Hooray!” from the quarterdeck. He remembered the cool shadow that had fallen over him right before Sorey kissed his head; he thought about how even if they were on their own now with no idea who to trust, no idea about what their capabilities or potentials were--at least they had each other.

Mikleo’s fingers brushed his forehead once more, before falling to the crude pendant ribboned to his neck. His thumb brushed across the jagged edges and carvings that had been etched by an eight-year-old’s hand what felt like ages ago. 

His smile widened.


End file.
